My Bookmarx 06/23/2013

“In no way am I questioning the legitimacy of the Gezi Park protests. The overwhelming demonstrations in Istanbul, which have now spread across the country, illustrate the increasing dissent among the people in Turkey against the government’s horrid human rights violations and authoritarian rule. These protests need solidarity – they are necessary and positive developments. And it was about time!”

“WLUML calls for the immediate release of FEMEN activists, including Amina Tyler, and demands that the Tunisian government drop all charges. WLUML does not endorse FEMEN’s tactics or specific platforms, but we find the imminent imprisonment of FEMEN activists for exercising their right to freedom of expression to be a violation of fundamental human rights. However we may feel about nude protest as a method, it is critical to defend the right of free expression, particularly in the post-dictatorship countries of the Middle East. “

“The long night of fights June 17 changed the situation in Brazil and resized social protests. The massive mobilization of nearly 1 million protesters in dozens of cities and capitals of the country and the world did not happen in our political history from the Outside Collor in 1992. There is a before and after putting on the national scene a new collective historical subject that catalyst is a powerful social force in the streets.”

“Here I reproduce two recent pieces on the protests in Brazil. The first piece is by Peter Storms, from ROARMAG.org. The second is by an active participant, part of a movement for free transportation that goes back to 2005. The Brazilian anarchist movement has deep roots.”

“When, in late 2010, Dilma Rousseff was elected President after eight years of the impossibly popular Lula, a national narrative was already ingrained, stressing that Brazil was not the “country of the future” anymore; the future had arrived, and this was a global power in the making.”

Not unlike China, Brazil was breathlessly exploiting natural resources – from its hinterland to parts of Africa – while betting heavily on large agribusiness mostly supplying, you guess it, China.

Brazil remained one the most (deadly) unequal nations in the world, peppered with retrograde landowning oligarchies and some of the most rapacious, arrogant and ignorant elites on the planet – inevitable by-products of ghastly Portuguese colonialism.

In Brazil as in Turkey, participative democracy was co-opted, ignored or forcefully diluted among an orgy of “mega-projects” generating dubious profits for a select few. In Turkey it revolves around the ruling party AKP’s collusion with business interests in the “redevelopment” of Istanbul; in Brazil around public funds for the hosting of the World Cup and the Olympics.

“Protesters have massed across Brazil to demonstrate against the rising costs of both public transport and the 2014 World Cup to be held in the country, following clashes with police over several days.”